Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The word bibliographia (βιβλιογραφία) was used by Greek writers in the first three
centuries AD to mean the copying of books by hand. In the 12th century, the word started
being used for "the intellectual activity of composing books". The 17th century then saw
the emergence of the modern meaning, that of description of books.[2] Currently, the field
of bibliography has expanded to include studies that consider the book as a material
object.[3] Bibliography, in its systematic pursuit of understanding the past and the present
through written and printed documents, describes a way and means of extracting
information from this material. Bibliographers are interested in comparing versions of
texts to each other rather than in interpreting their meaning or assessing their
significance.[4]
Field of studyEdit
Bibliography is a specialized aspect of library science (or library and information science,
LIS) and documentation science. It was established by a Belgian, named Paul Otlet (1868-
1944), who was the founder of the field of documentation, as a branch of the information
sciences, who wrote about "the science of bibliography."[5][6] However, there have recently
been voices claiming that "the bibliographical paradigm" is obsolete, and it is not today
common in LIS. A defense of the bibliographical paradigm was provided by Hjørland
(2007).[7] The quantitative study of bibliographies is known as bibliometrics, which is
today an influential subfield in LIS.[8][9]
BranchesEdit
Carter and Barker (2010) describe bibliography as a twofold scholarly discipline—the
organized listing of books (enumerative bibliography) and the systematic description of
books as physical objects (descriptive bibliography). These two distinct concepts and
practices have separate rationales and serve differing purposes. Innovators and originators
in the field include W. W. Greg, Fredson Bowers, Philip Gaskell, G. Thomas Tanselle.
Bowers (1949) refers to enumerative bibliography as a procedure that identifies books in
“specific collections or libraries,” in a specific discipline, by an author, printer, or period of
production (3). He refers to descriptive bibliography as the systematic description of a
book as a material or physical artifact. Analytical bibliography, the cornerstone of
descriptive bibliography, investigates the printing and all physical features of a book that
yield evidence establishing a book's history and transmission (Feather 10). It is the
preliminary phase of bibliographic description and provides the vocabulary, principles and
techniques of analysis that descriptive bibliographers apply and on which they base their
descriptive practice.
creator(s)
title
place of publication
publisher or printer
date of publication
creator(s)
article title
journal title
volume
pages
date of publication
Format and Collation/Pagination Statement – a conventional, symbolic formula that describes the
book block in terms of sheets, folds, quires, signatures, and pages
According to Bowers (193), the format of a book is usually abbreviated in the collation
formula:
Broadsheet: I° or b.s. or bs.
Folio: 2° or fol.
Quarto: 4° or 4to or Q° or Q
Octavo: 8° or 8vo
Duodecimo: 12° or 12mo
Sexto-decimo: 16° or 16mo
Tricesimo-secundo: 32° or 32mo
Sexagesimo-quarto: 64° or 64mo
The collation, which follows the format, is the statement of the order and size of the
gatherings.
For example, a quarto that consists of the signed gatherings:
2 leaves signed A, 4 leaves signed B, 4 leaves signed C, and 2 leaves signed D
would be represented in the collation formula:
4°: A2B-C4D2
Binding – a description of the binding techniques (generally for books printed after 1800)
Title Page Transcription – a transcription of the title page, including rule lines and ornaments
Contents – a listing of the contents (by section) in the book
Paper – a description of the physical properties of the paper, including production process, an
account of chain-line measurements, and a description of watermarks (if present)
Illustrations – a description of the illustrations found in the book, including printing process (e.g.
woodblock, intaglio, etc.), measurements, and locations in the text
Presswork – miscellaneous details gleaned from the text about its production
Copies Examined – an enumeration of the copies examined, including those copies' location (i.e.
belonging to which library or collector)
Analytical bibliographyEdit
This branch of the bibliographic discipline examines the material features of a textual
artifact – such as type, ink, paper, imposition, format, impressions and states of a book – to
essentially recreate the conditions of its production. Analytical bibliography often uses
collateral evidence – such as general printing practices, trends in format, responses and
non-responses to design, etc. – to scrutinize the historical conventions and influences
underlying the physical appearance of a text. The bibliographer utilizes knowledge gained
from the investigation of physical evidence in the form of a descriptive bibliography or
textual bibliography.[17] Descriptive bibliography is the close examination and cataloging of
a text as a physical object, recording its size, format, binding, and so on, while textual
bibliography (or textual criticism) identifies variations – and the aetiology of variations – in
a text with a view to determining "the establishment of the most correct form of [a] text
(Bowers 498[1]).
BibliographersEdit
Paul Otlet, to work in an office built at his home following the closure of the Palais Mondial in June 1937
A bibliographer is a person who describes and lists books and other publications, with
particular attention to such characteristics as authorship, publication date, edition,
typography, etc. A person who limits such efforts to a specific field or discipline is a subject
bibliographer."[18]
A bibliographer, in the technical meaning of the word, is anyone who writes about books.
But the accepted meaning since at least the 18th century is a person who attempts a
comprehensive account—sometimes just a list, sometimes a fuller reckoning—of the books
written on a particular subject. In the present, bibliography is no longer a career, generally
speaking; bibliographies tend to be written on highly specific subjects and by specialists in
the field.
References